Using an AI tool to help you write anything has become increasingly popular. Not only do they speed up your writing process, but they also help you tackle notorious writing blocks.
In this article, we’ll review a state-of-the-art AI tool that rewrites any sentence: QuillBot AI.
What is QuillBot?
With offices in Chicago and Jaipur, QuillBot is popular for its paraphrasing feature.
The QuillBot project started back in 2017 and since then their user growth has been exponential. As the product of a team of former Illinois students, it has, naturally, amazing tools directed especially at University students, like the citation generator.
However, the application in general is targeted at anyone that writes.
Its text features are several: from changing the words with synonyms using Thesaurus to modifying the sentence structure by rearranging clauses. They also showcase statistics on readability so you know how QuillBot improved your text (or not).
In this case, you can see that the changes I made with the tool decreased readability. That’s because not everything you write needs to go through this process.
But if you pay attention while using the app, you’ll be able to choose the best options and form the an amazing team with the AI.
And the best part? QuillBot is available for free to anyone on the Internet: you don’t even have to register or download an app; it’s all online.
Key Features
Grammar Checker
Besides correcting your grammar on QuillBot, you can also modify the text font and the alignment of the paragraph. That way, when you export the work as a Word file, everything’s well arranged and ready to share.
Citation Generator
As a student myself, I really appreciate this feature. I just have to enter the URL of the text I want to cite and QuillBot will create the text in the citation style I select: APA format, MLA format or Chicago Style.
Paraphraser
Disclaimer: the paraphraser is meant to help you rewrite your own texts. It wasn’t created to plagiarize other people’s work. Moreover, if you use it like that, Turnitin will still be able to detect plagiarism. Respect other people’s writings and quote them when necessary.
The paraphraser has a lot of features:
- Multiple modes. Standard and Fluency are free, then you have Formal, Simple, Creative, Expand and Shorten. The Premium plan also lets you compare all the seven modes at once, so you can choose the one that sounds better.
- Personalization. You can change the settings to better suit your goals. For example, you can tick off “Paraphrase quotations” so you can keep quotes intact anytime. The synonym tool also has a slide so you can adjust the number of synonyms added. The highest setting, however, is only available to Premium users.
- Freeze words. Freeze unlimited words and phrases with Premium. Save keywords and stop critical words from being paraphrased.
- Last paraphrased text. Although QuillBot doesn’t hold a history of your work, it does show you the last paraphrased text you created, in case you need to go back to it.
Co-Writer Beta
This feature is more similar to Shortly and other AI writing tools we talked about in the past that help you research and compose your writing.
It integrates all of QuillBot’s tools in one place. And it also includes a Voice Transcript option in case you prefer to dictate your text.
Summarizer
Condense articles and other documents into a new paragraph or key sentences. Use the slide to determine the length of the summary. This tool could be useful to write the abstracts of your academic papers.
Other Features
- Word and character counter.
- Available only in English with three varieties of the language: American, British and Australian.
- Dark mode.
- Upload and export texts.
- Word, Docs, and Chrome extensions.
Resources
QuillBot has a free Get Your Thesis Back On Track online course where they help you create a solid writing and research workflow.
They also have a YouTube channel with demos; a Help Center where you’ll find FAQs and how-tos, and a blog where they share news and tips.
If you have any questions or want to contact them for any reason, they have a form you can fill out. Note that they don’t reply on weekends or U.S. holidays and they might take a while to get back to you. I wrote to them two days ago and they haven’t answered me yet.
Pricing
- Free: No credit card required. 150 paraphrase limit and 2 writing modes. Try QuillBot for free.
- Premium: $7.95 if billed monthly; $.99 per month if billed every 6 months, or $3.33 per month if billed yearly. Within the first three days of purchase, you can ask for their 100% money back guarantee. They even have an option to pause your subscription. Premium includes unlimited words to paraphrase and lets you compare modes and see the longest unchanged words.
How to use QuillBot Co-Writer?
As mentioned before, the QuillBot Co-Writer integrates all of QuillBot’s tools.
So if you master it, you master all the elements.
Below is a tutorial.
Set Up
1. Click on Co-Writer and create an account.
2. Personalize the tool. You can skip this step, but keep in mind the more information you provide, the better it’ll work for you. I’m really picky about my privacy, but I answered the questions in the name of science.
3. You’ll arrive at the dashboard. Here you can click the button “Create New” or “Upload” depending on whether you have previous documents or not.
QuillBot’s storage lets you have multiple writings on the app. As you can see, I already have some projects going on but still have a ton of storage left.
Start Writing
4. Once you choose your project, you’ll be directed to this page where you can start writing and its Grammar checker will automatically underline your errors.
You might want to correct them manually or simply click on the “A” with a tick at the bottom of the text to fix all grammar errors instantly.
5. If you need more information for your project, you can research topics inside of the Co-Writer by just typing in the search bar whatever you want to see.
Then click “Pull Source” and access the content. And if you’re looking particularly for content with data, go to the “Statistics” subtab, where QuillBot will show you only sentences with stats.
6. Using direct quotes is always good for your academic papers. So you can right-click a sentence on the source to auto-insert citations.
You’ll find all your citations in the “Citations” tab where you can edit them, find them on the page, and much more.
7. Save the bookmarks you find useful and head to your workplace -aka the “Notebook” tab- to see them all together. If you come up with some ideas you don’t know how to incorporate into your text yet, just go to the subtab “Ideas” and write them down for later.
8. After all this work, you might be feeling a bit tired. That’s when QuillBot will come to take your place. Use the hotkey Ctrl+Spacebar to generate the next sentence with the AI assistant.
9. If the output doesn’t quite convince you, highlight the text, and right-click to paraphrase it , or press Ctrl+Shift+P.
The new output will be displayed at the right side of your screen so you can read it and decide whether to include it or not. To do so, click “Insert”.
Final Steps
10. Once you’re pretty much done, you might want to take a look at your own statistics to see how your text will be perceived. Mine, for example, shows a positive sentiment, which is always great.
11. If you need to write a summarized version of your text, go to the Summarizer and choose between “Key Sentences” or “Paragraph”. The result will be something like this:
12. Finally, give your text the final tweaks by adding indents, italics, and even background color.
13. Export the final product as a Word document, print it, or copy it to share it with the world!
QuillBot Pros and Cons
Pros
- Simple and easy-to-use interface. All the tools are very similar and intuitive, so you don’t have to waste any time trying to figure out how they work. Besides, it doesn’t have ads or pop-ups, so your workspace is completely distraction-free.
- Free tools. Although some features are restricted to premium users, QuillBot has plenty of tools for everyone.
- Very cool features like research statistics and citation generator.
- Open to feedback. QuillBot has a comment icon visible at all times. You can click it and write them some feedback or enter their Discord channel to chat through there.
Cons
- There’s no dashboard. When you click “Home”, you automatically go to the Paraphrase tool. This also means you can’t write multiple projects at the same time, unless you use the Co-Writer.
- No language variety. The tool puts a lot of emphasis on helping students, but the only students that can benefit from it are the ones who speak English.
Verdict
QuillBot is an amazing AI writing tool that has enough features to please anyone, from students to content writers, community managers, and more.
Although the language restriction is a big con, they seem to be open to feedback and might consider adding some variety.
In the meantime, I hope this review and tutorial help you and you start using QuillBot’s current tools in your daily writing routine. They are worth it.
Happy writing!
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